Bagpipes are a woodwind instrument using enclosed reeds fed from a constant reservoir of air in the form of a bag. The Great Highland bagpipes are well known, but people have played bagpipes for centuries throughout large parts of Europe, Northern Africa, Western Asia, around the Persian Gulf and northern parts of South Asia.
In Spain, music has a long history. It has played an important role in the development of Western music, and has greatly influenced Latin American music. Spanish music is often associated with traditional styles such as flamenco and classical guitar. While these forms of music are common, there are many different traditional musical and dance styles across the regions. For example, music from the north-west regions is heavily reliant on bagpipes, the jota is widespread in the centre and north of the country, and flamenco originated in the south. Spanish music played a notable part in the early developments of western classical music, from the 15th through the early 17th century. The breadth of musical innovation can be seen in composers like Tomás Luis de Victoria, styles like the zarzuela of Spanish opera, the ballet of Manuel de Falla, and the classical guitar music of Francisco Tárrega. Nowadays commercial pop music dominates.
The Galician gaita is the traditional instrument of Galicia and northern Portugal.
Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro is a historical province of Portugal located in the northeastern corner of the country, known for its scenery, which includes plateaux, river valleys, mountains, and castles.
Northwest Iberian folk music is a traditional highly distinctive folk style, located along Spain's north-west Atlantic coast, mostly Galicia and Asturias, that has some similarities with the neighbouring area of Cantabria. The music is characterized by the use of bagpipes.
Vallenato, is a popular folk music genre from Colombia. It primarily comes from its Caribbean region. Vallenato literally means "born in the valley". The valley influencing this name is located between the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and the Serranía de Perijá in north-east Colombia. The name also applies to the people from the city where this genre originated: Valledupar. In 2006, vallenato and cumbia were added as a category in the Latin Grammy Awards. Colombia’s traditional vallenato music is Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding, according to UNESCO.
Alto Trás-os-Montes, or Nordeste Transmontano, is a former NUTS-level 3 subregion of the Norte Region of Portugal. It was abolished at the January 2015 NUTS 3 revision. Its 15 municipalities occupied an area of 8,168 km2 (3,154 sq mi) in the north-east of continental Portugal with an estimated 2008 population of 214,460 inhabitants; thus it constituted approximately 40% of the area, but only 6.1% of the population, of the Norte Region.
La Musgaña is a Spanish folk music ensemble, founded in 1986 by Enrique Almendros, José María Climent and Rafa Martin. The band incorporates various instruments such as the dulcimer, fiddle, hurdy-gurdy, bagpipes, flutes, guitar and bass, and performs traditional music from the Iberian peninsula, mostly from the Spanish regions of Castile, Zamora, Leon, Extremadura and La Mancha. La Musgaña means "water-rat" in Spanish.
The Associação Gaita-de-fole is a non-profit organization, founded officially in 1994 by enthusiasts of the Portuguese folk traditions — specially the related with the Transmontan and Galician bagpipes. The volunteers contribute in a variety of ways, as artisans, musicians, anthropologists and teachers, both professional and amateurs.
The Leonese are a subgroup of Spaniards, native to León in Spain.
The gaita transmontana or gaita de foles mirandesa is a type of bagpipe native to the Trás-os-Montes region of Portugal.
The gaita sanabresa is a type of bagpipe native to Sanabria, a comarca of the province of Zamora in northwestern Spain.
Aliste is a comarca located in the west of the province of Zamora, Castile and León, Spain, bordering with Portugal in the west and in the south. It covers 193,883 hectares. Aliste is an area that has preserved a rich cultural and ethnological tradition through years of isolation. Aliste is perhaps the poorest zone within the province, the economy of this deeply rural comarca is based on cattle rearing. The origin of the name Aliste appears as Alesti in a 9th Century manuscript, referring to the trees (alisos) which can be seen on the banks of what is now called the Aliste River.
A kuisi is a Native Colombian fipple flute made from a hollowed cactus stem, with a beeswax and charcoal powder mixture for the head, with a thin quill made from the feather of a large bird for the mouthpiece. Seagull, turkey and eagle feathers are among the feathers commonly used.
The term "provinces" has been used throughout history to identify regions of continental Portugal. Current legal subdivisions of Portugal do not coincide with the provinces, but several provinces, in their 19th- and 20th-century versions, still correspond to culturally relevant, strongly self-identifying categories. They include:
Trás-os-Montes is a geographical, historical and cultural region of Portugal.
The rabeca or rabeca chuleira is a fiddle originating in Portugal, commonly used in Portugal, Northeastern Brazil, where it is most commonly used in Brazilian forró music, and Cape Verde. It is descended from the medieval rebec.
The Galician Massif is a system of mountain ranges in the northwestern corner of the Iberian Peninsula. It is located in Galicia with its southeastern end reaching into the provinces of Zamora and León of Castile and León. Its highest point is Pena Trevinca at 2,127 metres (6,978 ft). Another important peak is Cabeza de Manzaneda.
The gaita-de-fole coimbrã is a type of old Iberian bagpipe. Along with the machinho de Coimbra and the viola toeira, it is one of the most important traditional music instruments in the Beira Litoral Province. The Coimbra bagpipe belongs to the Iberian gaita-family. Unlike a Galician bagpipe, the chanter is thinner and smaller and presents an old "out-of-tune" scale, the drone is larger, heavy, but showing a fine woodturning job, and the old blow mechanism is primitive and very hard to handle. Also the goat skin is used in a different way from the North of Portugal and Galicia: the chanter goes to the "left" leg, the drone to the "right" leg, and the blow tube on the neck.
